Showing papers in "Contributions to Indian Sociology in 2005"
TL;DR: This article examined how educated Chamar (Dalit) young men reflect on their education in the face of poor occupational outcomes and found that the most recent generation of high school and college graduates amongst the Chamars has failed to find salaried employment.
Abstract: Scholarly discussions of formal education in the global South are increasingly moving away from a narrow focus on human capital to consider the meanings that people attach to ‘being educated’. This article advances current debates on the social construction of educational value in South Asia by examining how educated Chamar (Dalit) young men reflect on their education in the face of poor occupational outcomes. Since the 1960s, Dalits’ investment in formal education in rural Uttar Pradesh (UP) has seen a marked rise, in part through emulation of higher castes. The pro–Dalit Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has also been instrumental in promoting a vision of empowerment through formal education and entry into white–collar employment. Our research in rural Bijnor district suggests that the most recent generation of high school and college graduates amongst the Chamars has failed to find salaried employment. Some young men respond to this exclusion by reaffirming their faith in the BSP's model of progress and establ...
70 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors sketch out how and why the family was interpolated both as an object of criticism and as a site of struggle during the Self-Respect movement in Tamil south India.
Abstract: During the second quarter of the 20th century, the Self Respect movement (cuyamariyatai iyakkam) introduced a programme of non-Brahmin uplift in Tamil south India that consisted of a radical critique of social, political and economic relations. By following the coverage of family and marriage in the Self Respect popular press (the weekly newspaper Kudi Arasu in particular), and through interviews with Self Respecters who lived through the period 1926–49, this article attempts to sketch out how and why the family was interpolated both as an object of criticism and as a site of struggle. That is to say, Self Respect was not only a set of arguments, but also a set of practical strategies for transforming everyday and ritual life into revolutionary propaganda through choice of dress, names, home decor and domestic ritual, as well as through attending public meetings and reading newspapers. In particular, ‘modern, Self Respecting Tamil couples’ were projected as a resolution to what the Self Respect movement h...
44 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe the process by which governmental technologies such as mapping and enumeration constitute new types of community by looking at housing practices in a slum, Dharavi, in Mumbai.
Abstract: This article describes the process by which governmental technologies such as mapping and enumeration constitute new types of community by looking at housing practices in a slum, Dharavi, in Mumbai...
39 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an ethnographic exploration of the rise and fall of nostalgia as a form of collective narrative among survivors of the 2001 ‘Gujarat’ earthquake is presented.
Abstract: This article is an ethnographic exploration of the rise and fall of nostalgia as a form of collective narrative among survivors of the 2001 ‘Gujarat’ earthquake. In the social sciences, nostalgia is commonly regarded as an inevitable consequence of alienation from natural and social worlds in both space and time. My data is presented here as a way of scrutinising the complex series of social relationships that create the misleading appearance of cause (alienation) and effect (nostalgia).
21 citations
TL;DR: This paper foregrounded the household, kinship, and work experiences of women who constitute one half of the community of plantation workers of south Indian origin, to provide a balanced perspective to the discourse on south Indian kinship systems and practices.
Abstract: The organisation of labour on tea plantations in Sri Lanka is based on a spatial, functional and ideological integration of kinship, marriage and ritual practices within a capitalist system of plantation production. This article foregrounds the household, kinship, and work experiences of women who constitute one half of the community of plantation workers of south Indian origin, to provide a balanced perspective to the discourse on south Indian kinship systems and practices. Its focus is on the reinforcement of kinship and gender inequalities within households and within the plantation labour organisation. In privileging women's experiences of kinship and marriage, this article adds to recent studies on kinship and gender in India that challenge the more traditional accounts based on androcentric perspectives, geographical generalisations, and the essentialisation of women.
19 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored the contrasting ways in which ideas about social completeness might be invoked in different contexts, and found that there are different ways of becoming a man and an adult, but also that these different ways draw on shared Indian idioms of what it is to be a complete person.
Abstract: This article, which draws on fieldwork with a community of leprosy-affected people in south India, explores the contrasting ways in which ideas about social completeness might be invoked in different contexts. Following an overview of how notions of ‘personhood’ and ‘adulthood’ in India have thus far been theorised, I go on to examine how my informants managed to construct their identities as ‘children’ in relation to foreign donors, without simultaneously surrendering claims to adult status. Since relationships with various categories of outsiders were only one set of routes through which my informants constituted themselves, the second half of the article focuses on the generational demarcations between the leprosy-affected people who founded the community, and their healthy sons. Ethnographic examples illustrate how there are different ways of becoming a man and an adult, but also that these different ways draw on shared Indian idioms of what it is to be a complete person.
18 citations
TL;DR: This article looked at the diverse and rich representations of headhunting in north-east India, especially in the European translations of this tribal practice into ethnographic 'writings' during the late imperial age.
Abstract: This article looks at the diverse and rich representations of headhunting in north–east India, especially in the European translations of this tribal practice into ethnographic ‘writings’ during the late imperial age. Colonial concern and anxiety to ‘civilise’ the headhunter and ‘control’ this ‘savage’ practice in the hills is characterised by inner contradictions at every level of its articulation and operation. Headhunting is a history, a heritage, a rhetorical trope, a discursive practice, a philosophy, a returning gaze from the ‘other’, and a space for contesting masculinity. Moreover, it is a textual ‘record’ of colonial knowledge about vanishing societies for the benefit of the human sciences as well as frontier administrators in the region. But the vanishing object of salvage ethno–graphy itself appears to be a colonial construct of the anthropologising world and its legitimising representational practice. Headhunting is often neither the subject nor the object of study: it is a prolific site of di...
12 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the relationship between traditional authority and the state, using a leadership dispute in a rural adivasi village as the ethnographic backdrop, and examine how traditional authority continues to be reproduced in the context of local notions of political and cosmological legitimacy.
Abstract: This article is an examination of the relationship between traditional authority and the state, using a leadership dispute in a rural adivasi village as the ethnographic backdrop. The primary objective of the article is to examine how traditional authority continues to be reproduced in the context of local notions of political and cosmological legitimacy. It shows how the state can simultaneously buttress and transform traditional authority. By looking at the processes by which the state is experienced by local people, the article also illuminates the relationship that people have with lower–level state officials. Finally, the article sheds light on one way in which Hindu nationalism is making inroads into this particular adivasi community, and addresses the implications of how the RSS, acting as an extra–state power, is used to enforce accountability at a lower level.
10 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the changing sociopolitical profile of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI) representatives in Bihar and argue that the political assertion of the upper backward castes-Yadnvus, Koeris and Kurmis- dates back to the pre-Mandal period.
Abstract: This article seeks to examine the changing sociopolitical profile of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI) representatives in Bihar. It argues (a) that the political assertion of the upper backward castes-Yadnvus, Koeris and Kurmis-in Bihar dates back to the pre-Mandal period; (b) that the OBCs are not a homogeneous sociopolitical community, since they comprise both dominant and deprived castes; and (c) that the upper castes, despite losing political ground at the level of the Vidhan Sabha and Lok Sabha, have been able to retain their foothold at the grassroots level as demonstrated by their substantial representation in the PRI elections of 2001. This has significant implications for political economy in a period of democratic devolution and decentralised development. More importantly, it explains the violence-ridden politics of the state: besides social and economic disparities there is considerable mismatch between political dominance in the upper tiers and at the grassroots levels of Indian society.
8 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored how specific but far more complex ideas of home and belonging circulate in Indian society, including Hindi travel literature and fictional material, official developmental discourse, PWD reports, scholarly writing, Bollywood cinema, and the rules regarding travel perks for government service.
Abstract: This article seeks to re-think the perspective within South Asian studies that speaks of the fixity of home and belonging in the Indian context. Accumulated scholarly wisdom frequently points to the singularity and transparency of ideas of attachment to ‘native places’ and ‘ancestral villages’. Through a consideration of a range of material, the paper explores how specific but far more complex ideas of home and belonging circulate in Indian society. The material analysed includes Hindi travel literature and fictional material, official developmental discourse, PWD reports, scholarly writing, Bollywood cinema, and the rules regarding travel perks for government service.
7 citations
TL;DR: In early debates in Kerala, artificial contraception was often presented in public discourse as hostile to the shaping of full-fledged modernity in Malayali society as discussed by the authors. But by the 1960s, however, family p...
Abstract: In early debates in Kerala, artificial contraception was often presented in public discourse as hostile to the shaping of full-fledged modernity in Malayali society. By the 1960s, however, family p...